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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27573452">Navigate a Broken Path</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/flashindie/pseuds/flashindie'>flashindie</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Good Girls (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Flashbacks, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Mick and Rio backstory, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 21:01:26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>12,515</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27573452</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/flashindie/pseuds/flashindie</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Look, all Mick’s getting at is that - - y’know. It’s not personal for him. He doesn’t count them, keep them, box them up or display them. Mick’s a professional, and killing people – it’s a part of this line of work. He knew it from the moment Pistol brought him on-side, and he knew it when he watched Rio kill Pistol and take over, and he knew it when he helped Rio take care of the body, and he knew it when Rio looked up at him after, his jaw bruised and his eyes too hard on his too young face and said <i>you know what this makes us?</i></p><p>Yeah.</p><p>Mick knew what it made them.</p><p>-</p><p>Set after 3.08, Rio sends Mick to take out Mary Pat. Then things get complicated.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Beth Boland/Rio, Boomer/Pain, Mary Pat/Mick, Mick &amp; Rio</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>60</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Navigate a Broken Path</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>A Mary Pat/Mick fic that nobody asked for, haha. Enjoy! </p><p>A million thanks to foxmagpie, ms_scarlet, sothischickshe and nickmillerscaulk, without who's enthusiasm, this fic would not exist.</p><p>Title is from The Panics <i>Don't Fight It</i></p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>She doesn’t look like her picture.</p><p>Or - - fuck.</p><p>Maybe she does.</p><p>Mick holds his cell a little closer to his face, squints down at it, watching the pixels form in her dark hair, in the awkward creases of her flannel shirt as she crouches down into the green grass of her garden, her lips split – a captured moment – picking up her crawling baby, and who the hell did Rio even send out to take this photo? It’s blurry as fuck, and it sure as hell wasn’t him. Must’ve been one of the new kids he’d promoted after they’d handled Turner, which - -</p><p>Mick resists the urge to snort.</p><p>A mess if he’d ever seen one.</p><p>Taking out the rest of those agents might’ve looked good in the moment, but it hadn’t been the way they’d done business. Not before, anyway. Drew too much attention, even as a drive-by. Created too many enemies out of collateral damage, and Rio had <em>known </em>that, but he’d been too pressed to give a shit. Mick should’ve figured. Could tell the guy was growing antsy in that hotel room from his texts. The quick barrages of them and the hyperfixations – on the spread of Slav’s business downtown, on Cisco not keeping a close enough eye on Marcus and Rhea (like there was ever enough for Rio), on the apparently shit-fuck annoying way Turner ate kung pao chicken, on <em>her</em>, always – but he’d stupidly thought Rio would stick to the plan. The long game, and fuck, he must’ve known himself that Mick wouldn’t approve if he’d sent those kids to do the job instead of him.</p><p>Still, he hasn’t sent the kids to handle this one.</p><p>He’s sent Mick.</p><p>Twisting his neck, Mick tears his gaze from his cell to stare out the window of his car, watching The Mark stride out across the parking lot, a brood of three boys trying to match her step. One’s got sauce spilled down his shirt, another looks like he hasn’t washed his hair in a month, and together they all look like they’re chattering, mouths moving a million miles an hour as The Mark tries to balance groceries on the hip not doubling as a seat for the baby in her arms.</p><p>She doesn’t exactly look like trouble, but Mick’s spent enough time in this line of work to know that that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Knows trouble can wear knee socks and sweater vests just as easy as it can wear wifebeaters and bomber jackets – has handled his fair share of both too – but still, he thinks.</p><p>It’s hard to believe this woman was the one holding Rio’s girl’s hand to the fire.</p><p>As if on cue, the paper grocery bag she has propped on her hip splits – a can of pulped tomatoes, a box of pasta, frozen waffles, shrink wrapped hot dogs (and fuck, who even packed this bag?) drops out the tail of it, and damn.</p><p>She doesn’t even cuss.</p><p>No, she flounders, red cheeked at the spill over the grocery store parking lot as some guy in a too-small suit steps over the mess and onwards, ignoring her, and she bends down to the ground, embarrassed, only one of her kid’s darting over to help, and even that’s just to grab the box of Scooby Doo macaroni and run when his brother tries to pluck it from his arms.</p><p>“Guys, come on!” she calls.</p><p>It’s the first thing he hears her say.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>This is how they find her:</p><p>Rio’s girl brings them Leslie Peterson, twitching in a hockey bag, tatted up and smelling like yesterday’s shit, and fuck, Mick remembers the guy too well. Remembers deals with this particular Fine &amp; Frugal just off 31<sup>st</sup> Street. Remembers negotiating with the yellow-bellied owner with his gun loose in his grip, and this fucker lingering just outside the office in a dollar-store tie and a nametag that read <em>Boomer</em> like he thought that made him sound hard.</p><p>In hindsight, maybe Mick should’ve taken him more seriously. Or maybe less. Just shoulda spent a bit more time considering him at all, instead of forgetting him the second he was out of his line of sight. Maybe should’ve smelt it on the guy – that he wasn’t so much the type to have friends in high places, but maybe a few in low ones. The exact sort of bottom feeder that suckered his way onto the soles of whoever walked all over him, but okay, that really is hindsight, isn’t it?</p><p>Still, there seems to be personal history between this fuck and Rio’s girl’s sister, because the guy can’t keep her name out of his mouth even with Carlos’ fist below his ribs. Spits it out a few times with a couple of his teeth, <em>Annie this, Annie that</em>, how sad it was, how much she wanted him, how much she got her nose up when he rejected her, which is why she robbed the store to get back at him (and man, this guy can’t lie to save his life), and Rio had sat beside Mick and just watched, bored, as Carlos grabbed a knife.</p><p>Or - - huh.</p><p>Maybe not bored.</p><p>Because Boomer said something about Annie’s bitch sister, and Mick and Carlos’ looks had slid back in time to see Rio’s fingers twitch.</p><p>“Try again,” Rio drawled, like he knew everything he needed to know about her, like it wasn’t what he was fishing for, and at least that much is true. The women are the least of their worries right now. What this fucker has – even if he doesn’t know it – is information on a connect in Ryan Correctional, and Mick’s about to start hinting at something because god knows this guy is too hung up on those women to put two and two together, when he levels them with a dead-eyed stare and says:</p><p>“Wait, is this about Mary Pat?”</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>In the notes app on his cell, Mick maps her schedule.</p><p>It’s easy enough – her days are mostly the same.</p><p>Crack of dawn, she’s up with the baby.</p><p>Which isn’t exactly something she can escape. Not as a single mom, not with the baby sleeping in a crib in her room (away from the rest of the kids, who are stacked up in the sleepout like old shoes). So she gets up and she coos and she changes him and she feeds him, and she lets his head loll against her shoulder as she cleans up last night’s dinner.</p><p>She makes packed lunches on stale bread, and microwaves a breakfast from powdery, sachet porridge. She frazzles over homework that hasn’t been done and bills that haven’t been paid, and then she takes the kids to school and comes home and stares out the window into her backyard so blankly that sometimes Mick thinks she sees him.</p><p>She doesn’t.</p><p>(They never see Mick if he doesn’t want them to).</p><p>And the rest is like clockwork too.</p><p>She picks the kids up and tries to manage homework, dinner, tantrums, scraped knees, fights, rough-housing, rough-housing-that-turns-into-fights, bath time, bed time, midnight snacks.</p><p>Bills stack up in the mailbox and the lines on her face deepen, but still she manages church on Sunday, still manages to sit red cheeked through PTA meetings as other women talk about <em>hubbies </em>and cast long glances at where the hem has dropped from her jeans. She grocery shops on Discount Tuesdays, and gets into glassy eyed, dry throated fights over her son’s asthma medication at the drug store on at least one Thursday, and she declares Saturdays her <em>me night</em>, but all it really means is the neighbour picks up the kids and she sits up watching infomercials with a bottle of wine in a flannel shirt that isn’t hers.</p><p>The first time he breaks into her house he sees that flannel shirt on a man in a photo on the dresser, and he’s not exactly looking for the guy, but soon he sees him everywhere. Sees him in old work boots caked in ancient mud beneath the coat rack and in the <em>World’s Best <strike>Father</strike> FARTER </em>mug collecting dust in the kitchen cabinets, and in the name <em>Jeff Warner</em> on the unopened mail shoved into the hall console and on the hunting trophies wrapped up in mildewy boxes in the garage.</p><p>And okay, Mick thinks then, back in his car, staring down at his notes.</p><p>A bullet under the chin with Jeff’s gun.</p><p>It’ll look like suicide.</p><p>Who wouldn’t believe it?</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>After Boomer had snitched, Rio had been - -</p><p>Well.</p><p>He’d been a lot of things, but the real sticking point for Mick was the whole fuckin’ like - -</p><p><em>Giddiness </em>of him.</p><p>Kid on Christmas bullshit, y’know?</p><p>Mick was still cleaning Boomer’s blood off his knuckles, off the blade of his pen knife, as Carlos had dragged the guy whimpering into another room, and still Mick had found himself watching Rio, because he knew the guy well enough to know when he was trying to swallow his grin.</p><p>“You alright?” Mick asked after a moment, and it was all it took for Rio to <em>laugh</em>, the sound ricocheting off the ceiling of the bar, a spring to his step as he rested himself back against the counter, rolling his sleeves back down, his own knuckles a little bloody.</p><p>(And hadn’t that been a show too? He’d only sucker punched Boomer after he’d made some pathetic comment about a contact with the feds, but the memory of the way Rio’s hand had twitched when Boomer had called Her a <em>bitch </em>was still too fresh, and huh, Mick thinks a little wryly, maybe the guy can still practice patience after all).</p><p>“I’m good, man,” Rio had hummed, re-doing the buttons on his cuffs, a sated set to his shoulders that Mick had grown unused to since the night in his loft. “<em>Real </em>good.”</p><p>The smell of blood and bleach and chalk and day-old soy sauce lingers thick in the air around them, and Mick can only watch as Rio turns to lean over the bar, just enough to grab a damp dishcloth and swipe at his bloodied knuckles. Mick should probably do something similar. He glances down at his own, sees the way the skin’s already bruising purple beneath the thick, sticky red of Boomer’s blood, and without thinking, he wets his lips, goes to wipe his hand on his jeans, when suddenly Rio’s leaning over again for another cloth, tossing it easily in Mick’s direction. Before he could say anything, hell, before he could even start to clean himself up, Rio’s moved around the back of the bar, said:</p><p>“You wanna drink?”</p><p>And it’s funny then, remembering the way Rio had looked in that room with Boomer. Remembering the way his look had sparked with the name <em>Mary Pat. </em>Like a flick of an ember, catching in the tinderbox of his interest, and yeah.</p><p>Mick wanted a drink.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>Okay, here’s the thing:</p><p>Rio and Mick hadn’t grown up together, but they’d <em>come </em>up together which was about as good.</p><p>New initiates around the same time into some inner-city street gang - - and - -</p><p>No.</p><p>Not <em>some. </em></p><p>Into <em>Pistol’s</em> gang. A wide-jawed, shark-eyed fuck with a penchant for taking shit out on his own guys if he couldn’t take it out on other people’s. He’d run most of the southside back then – between the drugs and the underground fighting and the pimping – and Mick hadn’t exactly planned to get caught up with that shit, but damn, who does?</p><p>Because look, alright, maybe Mick had jacked a car as a kid just to see if he could and maybe he’d had the book thrown at him because even at fifteen he looked like a thug, and maybe coming out of juvie with no cash and no options had put him on a highway to someone’s nowhere. Maybe a few boys he met inside though showed him some other roads that wouldn’t get him cleaned up, but shit, would get him <em>somewhere, </em>and it started with boxing in Pistol’s glorified fight club, and then maybe it was no time at all before Pistol cut him in as muscle, and he can’t have been older than nineteen when he met Rio.</p><p>And Rio - - he was maybe seventeen himself, skinny as fuck with a jittery impatience to him that wanted more, better, faster, and honestly, he’d pissed Mick off enough that the first few times they were in each other’s orbit, Mick had kicked the shit out of him.</p><p>A <em>lot</em>.</p><p>And even back then, Rio was more determined, more ambitious, more scrappy than he had any fucking right to be, and it didn’t matter how many times Mick knocked him on his ass, Rio would learn and adapt and mix it up and he couldn’t get one over on Mick, but slowly he was getting some of the other kids on their asses and hustling in ways Mick didn’t realise you <em>could </em>hustle, and it was only ever a matter of time before Pistol noticed and brought him deep into the fold.</p><p>Still, they didn’t like each other, not until some other job had gone south, and Pistol, spitting shit, and for no other reason except that he <em>could, </em>had levelled a gun at Mick and pulled the trigger.</p><p>All the fuckers scattered except Rio, and back then the guy had no pull beyond who he could carry on his back, and just - - he’d carried Mick that night. Lugged him out with a strength Mick didn’t know the kid had and they hadn’t really known each other at all, but Mick still remembers Rio dumping him by the back wall behind the bar out on Smith Street, shirt covered in Mick’s blood, and just - - <em>staring </em>at him.</p><p>Still remembers the look in his eye then, and Mick had felt it.</p><p><em>This kid’ll be something, </em>he’d thought.</p><p>Better than Pistol.</p><p>Bigger than Pistol.</p><p>And what was Mick to do?</p><p>He’d always been a survivor.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>So they were a few drinks in when Rio had slumped back into the booth at the bar, scraping his glass back across the table towards himself, staring down at it with wet lips and faraway eyes and said:</p><p>“She’s her rotten egg.”</p><p>And then he’d laughed, added: “Trust her to get on the hook with some fuckin’ grocery store manager’s side bitch.”</p><p>Which - - sure, Mick had thought, taking a sip of his beer, watching as Rio shifted restless in his seat, the sounds of Carlos’ fists and Boomer crying and spluttering echoing through the bar, and after a moment, he’d just shrugged.</p><p>“Peterson’s not just a grocery store manager.”</p><p>Because he wasn’t unfortunately, and Rio had snorted, unimpressed, settling back into the booth, and the thing is, Mick could see it.</p><p>The flip book of Rio’s mind, sketching out pictures at a rapid speed, forming something like a plan, and Mick knew better than to ask questions, but also, fuck, this was getting out of hand. He’d spent enough time watching his girl’s place to know that there wasn’t any real threat there. That the only hold Elizabeth Boland had over him wasn’t so much professional as it was - - well.</p><p>Mick licked his teeth.</p><p>“You think this ‘Mary Pat’ even knows much?” he asked. He suspected not. She can’t have learnt jack-shit through Boomer after all, and even if this woman <em>had </em>been working for Boland, Rio’s only been drip feeding her information on a needs to know basis, or fuck, Mick had thought in the moment of it, leveling another look at Rio. Had he been? He couldn’t really tell anymore.</p><p>Still, Rio had just shrugged, hadn’t bothered answering the question and oh.</p><p>It doesn’t really matter what this woman knows.</p><p>That’s not the point.</p><p>He hears the order in Rio’s silence.</p><p>
  <em>Take care of her.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>Mick doesn’t remember the first person he killed.</p><p>That’s bad, right? Mick figures he should know. Figures that’s something that should be etched into his memory, but Mick’s head’s never really worked that way. It’s like how he can barely remember losing his virginity, but he has the starkest, sharpest memory of Violet Porter sitting next to him on the bus in ninth grade, her knees bruised from the Junior Cadets obstacle course, and the smell of green apple lip balm and sunscreen wafting off her.</p><p>That’s probably bad too.</p><p>After all, Violet Porter was never the sort of girl who was going to go out with a kid like Mick, who was a little big, a little rough, a little dirty. He’d already had a few bad stick-and-poke tattoos then too that he managed to hide from his grandma until his sister brought it up on Friday night dinner, and - -</p><p>Shit.</p><p>Why does he remember that too?</p><p>Grandma hadn’t even cared.</p><p>She’d just stared at him blankly for a minute, before turning to talk to Mick’s brother about his college application.</p><p>Look, all Mick’s getting at is that - - y’know. It’s not personal for him. He doesn’t count them, keep them, box them up or display them. Mick’s a professional, and killing people – it’s a part of this line of work. He knew it from the moment Pistol brought him on-side, and he knew it when he watched Rio kill Pistol and take over, and he knew it when he helped Rio take care of the body, and he knew it when Rio looked up at him after, his jaw bruised and his eyes too hard on his too young face and said <em>you know what this makes us? </em></p><p>Yeah.</p><p>Mick knew what it made them.</p><p>So he figures he’ll do it on a Saturday.</p><p>Figures posing the suicide on her <em>me night </em>is the way to go because the neighbour will have the boys watching <em>Voltron: Legendary Defender </em>so loud that they might not even process the shot. Like - - they’ll <em>hear it</em>, but there’s not much getting around that, and the least Mick can do is make sure they won’t be the ones to find her.</p><p>Still, Mick can’t say he likes it.</p><p>The thought of leaving four boys without a mother, but that’s not a particular line of thought that’s going to get him anywhere. It’s the job, that’s all, and he made his peace with that the night he watched Pistol’s skin melt as the fire consumed him in the backseat of his slick black Lamborghini.</p><p>A hellish heat prickles at Mick’s skin through the tinted glass of his car window, and there’s an irony there that’s almost funny. After all, he’s parked outside the church, watching through the open doors at the back as The Mark steps up for holy communion, sips her wine, takes her bread, her blessing, her breath, and wobbles back to her feet to move down the aisle. The hardwood pews stretch out either side of her, and Mick watches the smoke from the hanging candles fog the air above her, watches her blue eyes match the stained glass windows behind her and her pale skin catch the bright light that casts through them.</p><p>And then she stops.</p><p>Close to the back of the church.</p><p>She lifts a hand, crosses herself so slowly that Mick shifts in his seat, blinks curiously, watching as her hand dips down to the centre of her chest, then to her right shoulder, and then - -</p><p>Then her other arm darts out, fast as anything, and Mick follows it in time to see her swipe a loose twenty dollar bill from the donation plate at the door. She pockets it quickly, finishes her cross, and slips back around the side towards her pew.</p><p>Huh, Mick thinks, exhaling a laugh.</p><p>She’s pretty quick.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>AJ says <em>more</em>, and Mick tries not to let his gaze slip sideways to where he knows Rio’s shoulders are pulling taut.</p><p>“Seventy?” Rio says, voice leaden with disbelief, and AJ only hums, resting back a little against the wall, arms crossed over his chest, ruining the lines of his good suit. “Shit, man - -”</p><p>“I know,” AJ agrees. “I tried to talk Louis down, but in terms of the closing costs for the two months you were AWOL, to say nothing of the lost business, he’s feeling burnt. A seventy percent cut of the first ten runs of cash - - he’s willing to let bygones be bygones. Anything less than that, as far as he’s concerned, this conversation never happened.”</p><p>Rio rocks his jaw, adjusts his grip on his pool cue.</p><p>“He usually gets forty.”</p><p>“So you should be lucky he’s not asking for eighty. It’s just the first ten print runs, then you can renegotiate. If business really is back up and running, you’ll hold all the cards again anyway. He’ll need you more than you need him then. He knows that. He just also knows it’s the opposite right now.”</p><p>Rio blisters with tension behind the pool table and he nods, laughs dryly, nods again, rubs his jaw with his free hand, and Mick steps a little closer, just in case.</p><p>He doesn’t need to though, not really. Rio somehow manages to bite back the bitter pill of his anger and the deal settles and then AJ leaves, and the door’s barely even clicked shut behind him when Mick finds his tongue.  </p><p>“Ten runs,” he says, because it’s just ten runs, and it’s bullshit but it’s manageable, and if it’ll get them back in business, nothing else matters.</p><p>In the storeroom out back, one of the bartender’s starts pulling out bottles, the action telling in the heavy pull of cardboard cartons along the steel shelves, the glass bottles clanging together with the motion, and they’re reopening the bar tonight too. The reminder loosens something in Mick’s chest, because alright. Louis taking more than his share of the money for distribution alone is a clear fuckin’ insult, but it’s one they can afford to cop on their way back up. The cash isn’t their only source of income after all, and with the bar back up, the pills, and some of the more lucrative supply deals coming back down through the pipeline, they’ll be able to pay Louis back that insult in six months tops.</p><p>Like he’s read his mind, Rio sucks in his lips, turns just enough to put the pool cue away, and he opens his mouth to reply, only - -</p><p>Only his phone buzzes on the side of the pool table, the screen lighting up with an unsaved number, and shit, it doesn’t matter. Mick’s seen it blow up Rio’s phone enough to know exactly who it is.</p><p>And it’s instant then – the fishhook in Rio’s attention – every new ring like a pull on the line, reeling him in and in and in, and then, just like that, he’s lost him.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>Thing is, Mick’s used to being alone.</p><p>Was never a family man even when he was a part of one. His mom dead, dad gone, him and his brothers and sisters had been raised by their grandma, which was fine. She wasn’t the doting sort really, but she wasn’t some dragon lady either, and Mick had mostly wanted to do his own thing, and she’d mostly let him. Then juvie happened, and okay, maybe he’d been on his own a little more after that than he wanted, but then it became normal too.</p><p>Whatever.</p><p>That’s life.</p><p>Mick adapts.</p><p>His sister told him once that she thought he must’ve been a nomad in a past life, which never really made sense to him. He doesn’t travel. Has never even been further than Fort Simpson, unless you count that one job in Alaska, but fuck.</p><p>Mick tries not to.</p><p>(And okay, maybe he does remember some kills, because he remembers too much blood, frozen in ice. Remembers Rio’s grit teeth and the snow in his eyelashes and stitches in somebody’s basement and the sky warping green above them as they reloaded their guns).</p><p>What his sister meant though was that he didn’t spend a lot of time at home, which is true enough. Rio had gotten him set up somewhere nice though – some inner-city apartment that was really too big for just him, with clean walls and polished wood floors and a walk-in closet Mick had no idea what the fuck he was supposed to do with.</p><p>He’s only got three jackets, y’know? And he doesn’t really make a habit of button-downs.</p><p>The hot tub was a good get though.</p><p>He’s gotta give Rio’s girl props for that one.</p><p>Vaguely, he wonders if Rio’s there now. Hounding her at the store or in the pick-up line at her kids’ school, making her flush and flounder and clench her small, pale fists until that vein on the back of her hand pulses like a river on the snowy cap of her skin, and he figures probably. Rio’d been pissed enough in the meeting with AJ after all – the reminder that the legacy of what she’d done to him was more than just the new scars on his chest and the difficulty he had in lifting his son must’ve been really felt in that shit fuck deal after all – and there didn’t seem to be anything Rio enjoyed more these days than picking at that particular scab, fuck anything else that might come up with it.</p><p>Mick looks out across his kitchen and, weirdly, he thinks of The Mark’s.</p><p>Thinks of all her bills and Scooby Doo macaroni and the kids playing Uno under the table and the baby yawning against her neck, and her, bright eyed, as she slipped that twenty from the church donation box.</p><p>His lips twitch again.</p><p>He shakes his head.</p><p>He gets a beer.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>And yeah, okay, he’ll be the first to admit he should have stayed at home.</p><p>He doesn’t exactly get nights off all that often, and there are a few women in his phone he could’ve had over (or if none of them were keen, Bullet always knew someone), but he’d had a beer and he’d just kept remembering her at the church, and so he’d peeled into his car and head out to her place.</p><p>It was scouting, that’s all.</p><p>Rio hadn’t stressed a timeline exactly, and while the guy was patient, he wasn’t exactly when it came to Her, and whatever, Mick thinks, pulling up in that good spot which gives him a perfect look into The Mark’s backyard. Work’s work.</p><p>From here, he can see through the back window into the kids’ room, and he sees the tallest one hang upside down from the ladder on the bunkbeds before kicking out – sort of like a flip – to tackle his brother to the floor. The wail that follows makes Mick snort, drum his hands against the bottom of the wheel, load up the notes app on his phone to record what, he’s got no idea, but then the backdoor whines open and it’s her.</p><p>She looks tired, dressed in stained jeans and a grey t-shirt with what Mick’s pretty sure is baby vomit on the shoulder, lugging a trash bag out to the bin. There’s nothing particularly profound about the moment, nothing noteworthy as she kicks a soccer ball out of the way only to stumble over a robot action figure, and just like at the grocery store, she doesn’t cuss.</p><p>Doesn’t say anything, but walks a little harder somehow. Joints stiffer, like they’re rusted shut or something, and she tosses the bag into the trash and then steps back and just sort of stands there for a minute. Sucking in deep breaths of cool night air, her eyes shut, and she seems to almost vibrate for a moment, her hand trembling as it raises to push her hair behind her ear and suddenly she seems <em>bottled</em>.</p><p>He can’t explain it, but he watches her and he half expects her to crumble and contort and evolve into something white hot and spitting, and her breaths are coming sharper and her chest rising further and Mick’s just watching her – this bright spark in the night – and he remembers the sky in Alaska and he remembers looking up at Rio after he’d pulled Mick’s bullet-riddled ass out of Pistol’s warehouse all those years ago, and shit, Mick doesn’t know <em>why </em>he’s thinking of any of this stuff<em>, </em>just knows that the images of it all are flicking too fast through his head, a flurry of blood against ice, against concrete floor, and lambent stars and smudged warehouse lights and the pain in his gut as Rio had fished the bullet out with inexperienced fingers, and - -</p><p>And suddenly the backdoor cracks open again and there’s one of her boys in the doorway, staring back at her with watery eyes.</p><p>“Mom? I don’t feel good,” he moans, and Mick exhales a breath he didn’t realise he’d been holding.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>The next night, he can only watch again as she spills out the medication on the kitchen table, rifling around for something to ease the baby’s cries, and then he remembers something else, and at least it makes sense.</p><p>The memory of how fucked up Rio had been when Marcus had croup, and shit, at least there was only one of him. He doesn’t know how she’s coping with all four kids wheezing and sneezing, and okay, maybe she’s not really coping, he thinks, watching when she stumbles outside, like she needs the air, the baby clutched to her chest and howling.</p><p>He watches her do a lap of the front yard and then another, kicking up khaki green grasshoppers as she tramples overgrown grass. Watches her neck flush red and her too-blue eyes close and the tears pearl in her lashes, and then he hears her too:</p><p>“You’ll get better, you’ll get better, you’ll get better,” she says, her voice raw, and Mick blinks and he sees his own hands, trembling as he tries to lay stitches in Rio’s side the first time, the second, the third.</p><p>He blinks and he sees them gripping the steering wheel too tight.</p><p>“Come on,” he hears her say. “Get better for mommy.” </p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>“Daddy!” Marcus calls from the warehouse floor. “Are you watching?”</p><p>“Yeah, pop, I’m watchin’.”</p><p>The giggle that follows echoes up around the empty building, and it’s enough to leave even Mick’s lips twitching, watching as Marcus slides across the floor like he’s straight outta <em>Top Gun, </em>and okay, maybe he’s missed this. It was hard to see the kid after Rio was arrested after all, and not even just because Rio had sent Mick out to tie up a whole lotta loose ends on either side of the border. Everything had required an extra degree of secrecy, an extra degree of carefulness that Gretch had insisted on, and Rio had too, but - - </p><p>Well.</p><p>Mick licks his teeth, slows his step, gaze sliding back to the other man.</p><p>Rio had been selective about what he’d been careful with.</p><p>Across the warehouse floor, Marcus’ sneakers squeak on the shining surface, the sound of his little feet suddenly shifting as he does a cartwheel, and Rio laughs, <em>ahhhing </em>appropriately as Marcus looks back at them, face flushed in delight. Mick nods at the kid, winks at him, and Marcus spins on the spot, running off towards the back of the place, doing an almost-flip, and it’s weird, the way he suddenly sees The Mark’s kid doing it off the bunkbed to tackle his brother. Mick shakes his head, dispersing the image, and beside him, Rio slows his step.</p><p>“It’ll work,” he says, glancing around the warehouse, and Mick hums in agreement. The place is huge – bigger than what they really need at this stage, but it’ll work for the treatment and distribution part of the job. They can divide the place up too – half cash, half pills – especially since Rio’s girl’s still printing at the card shop, so they won’t need to handle that part here. There’s an office too, which is particularly good, especially if Rio can manage to hold his tongue and <em>not </em>tell her about this place.</p><p>And y’know, Mick does take some of the blame for that. He never should’ve driven her to the bar that night. Should never have let Rio suggest it – fuck – still doesn’t entirely get why he <em>did. </em>It’s one thing to be meeting her at her place, at the store, the park, but that bar was <em>his. </em>Meeting her there meant giving her a key to a part of this world, business, just - - shit, <em>him, </em>that he had to know she’d use.</p><p>But try telling Rio that now, Mick thinks with a snort.</p><p>Had he always been this bad with advice?</p><p>Nah.</p><p>Rio had listened before – <em>still </em>listened about the business (it’s why he hadn’t talked to Mick about the hit on Turner – knows Mick would’ve talked him out of it), fuck, even about Rhea, but he’d take no advice, no opinions, when it came to this woman, and Mick doesn’t know what to make of that.</p><p>“You done it yet?”</p><p>Mick turns, glancing back at Rio, and the guy’s all sharp edges these days. Like a fistful of razor blades.</p><p>His eyes are almost black.</p><p>Mick doesn’t need to ask to know what he’s referring to.</p><p>“Not yet.”</p><p>Behind them, Marcus is yelling up at the ceiling, laughing as his voice echoes around the hollow of the warehouse, jumping and sliding against the dusty floors, and Rio watches Mick and Mick thinks about Rio watching her watch Mick shoot her friend.</p><p>He thinks of them pulling up to her on the next drop, the way the car headlights had made a halo of her strawberry blonde hair and crystalised the tears they could see on her ashen face and he remembers Rio beside him, watching her unblinking, his face carefully blank, but he hadn’t been able to stop his eyes from darting over her, his lips from working just slightly, and Mick doesn’t know how he’d known it, but in the moment of it, he knew that killing that girl had been a lesson he’d wanted Boland to learn, but not one he’d entirely wanted to teach her.</p><p>But then, maybe he was wrong, because if Rio didn’t want to teach his girl about consequences, why the fuck had he been so giddy at the prospect of repeating the class over and over? First with getting her to pick up Boomer (although – shit – okay, maybe that was more a lesson in power and discipline than <em>consequences</em>) and now with - -</p><p>“Tío!”</p><p>The name cuts through his thoughts, and Mick glances down to find Marcus bouncing on his toes, just a foot away, all dimples and dinosaur shirt, and Mick raises his eyebrows when Marcus lifts his arms, and right, Mick thinks. He lumbers forwards, grabbing the kid up, swinging him around and then high up into the air, grinning as Marcus screeches with laughter, and Mick runs across the empty warehouse floor with him, ignoring Rio’s <em>careful </em>behind him as he does, and they’re almost at the other side of the place when Mick glances back at where Rio watches them, a smile on his face that makes him look just like his fucking kid, and huh, Mick thinks.</p><p>Maybe he’s not <em>all </em>sharp edges yet.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>Still. Before they separate for the day, Rio grabs Mick’s shoulder, squeezes with a big hand. Says:</p><p>“Do it tonight.”</p><p>And Mick - -</p><p>Mick - -</p><p>He - -</p><p>Look.</p><p>It’s just the fucking job.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>The smell of cream and chicken broth and weak tea slips beneath the window as Mick leverages it open. It had been almost too easy to break the lock while The Mark had been at the drug store (forced to cart all four, snuffling, still-sick kids with her without anybody else at home), and Mick had made quick work of stealing through the house, of finding Jeff’s shotgun, loading it, and dipping back to the bathroom. She had one of those standalone sinks – something fat and square with a cracked porcelain bowl stained with dark hair dye – and he’d pulled it back from the wall just enough to store the gun behind it, hidden and ready for the night.</p><p>It wasn’t ideal.</p><p>Fuck, none of it was, nothing less so than the fact that her kids all slept in their beds and not at the neighbour’s, but Rio had made a choice today and Mick had made his a long time ago.</p><p>And besides, he can still make sure they won’t find her.</p><p>He’ll be quick.</p><p>Just enough noise to bring her into the bathroom.</p><p>He’ll get her to lock the door.</p><p>He’ll be out through the same window.</p><p>He’ll call 911.</p><p>It’ll be like he was never here at all, and the kids won’t know a thing.</p><p>Nah, all they’ll know is one night their mom tucked them into bed, and then all her grief and poverty-struck suffering got the better of her and she slipped out of their lives to watch over them from above, just like grandma used to tell Mick and his brothers and sisters after their mom died.</p><p>They’ll get through it.</p><p>Mick did.</p><p>Sure, he thinks, climbing in through the bathroom window, he’s also in the house of a widowed, church-going mother of four right now with a kill order, but these kids will have other options, or maybe they won’t, fuck, Mick doesn’t know. It’s not his business anyway really, and so what? If his feet find the tiled floor and his gaze catches on the oily bottle of baby shampoo at the side of the tub, a rubber duck beside it with the arm of an action figure coming out of the air hole at the base and it’s eyes coloured in with marker. So what if his gaze catches on the little Spiderman bathrobe hanging off the back of the door and the soft scent of honey and oatmeal soap he knows is hers?</p><p>He wets his lips, taking in the sunken bathtub, the foam bath letters, stuck to the tiles, mould creeping up the ceiling. Takes in the cracked tiles and the frayed toothbrushes on the sink and the way at least two of the towels are thin with holes in the bottom, and Mick blinks and he sees her, holding the baby in the yard, and he blinks and he sees Rio, dark eyed and sharp, saying <em>do it tonight, </em>and he feels it. The way his body loosens in that too-familiar way.</p><p>The way it does when he knows his night ends with his fingers on a trigger, a knife, a throat.</p><p>He doesn’t keep trophies.</p><p>He doesn’t collect these memories.</p><p>Still.</p><p>Something tells him he won’t easily be rid of this one.</p><p>His feet seem to move of their own accord, taking him back to the sink and he crouches quickly down beside it before, quietly as he can, leveraging it forwards. Moving a hand around the back, he gropes for the barrel of the shotgun, preparing himself for the cool metal, only - -</p><p>Only there’s nothing there.</p><p>Only then there <em>is, </em>just not at his fingers.</p><p>No, it’s the business end of the barrel at the back of his head.</p><p>“Don’t. Move.”</p><p>Her voice is firmer than he’s ever heard it, a thread of steel underneath it that churns something in Mick, because fuck - - he hadn’t even heard her come in. Slowly, he holds his hands up in surrender, gaze fixed on the base of the sink, and for a moment, he just weighs his options.</p><p>Could he get the gun off her?</p><p>He tests it, moving his head slightly, but shit, she knocks the barrel so firmly against his skull again, he jerks forwards, jaw rocking.</p><p>Maybe, he thinks. If he lunged. If he moved quick, but then - - he can’t get a look at her. Can’t quite tell how well she knows how to use the thing. He swallows, and - - huh. Is that his pulse? It feels like it’s racing, but he doesn’t feel anxious. Isn’t afraid of her. Why would he be? What was it Rio had called her? Some grocery store manager’s side bitch, but Peterson wasn’t a grocery store manager, and The Mark - -</p><p>The Mark has her hand down the back of his pants.</p><p>Mick blinks, throat dry, turns, but The Mark doesn’t lower her gun and it takes him longer than it damn well should to realise she’s just pulled his own gun from the back of his pants and claimed it.</p><p>“Is that all you’ve got?”</p><p>Her voice wobbles a little this time, like she’s just realised the precariousness of the situation, and briefly Mick contemplates lying, but then - -</p><p>Maybe he’s a little curious to see where this goes too.</p><p>“I’ve got a knife in my front left pocket.”</p><p>There’s silence then.</p><p>Or not silence exactly, but no noise beyond her kids snoring in the next room and the high-pitched little edge to her breaths, and she’s stuck now. He knows that. Can’t get the knife out of his front pocket without moving the gun from the back of his head, and Mick can’t quite bite back the grin.</p><p>He can practically <em>hear</em> her thinking, and there’s something in that that just settles right in his head.</p><p>“You want me to pass it over?”</p><p>“No,” she says quickly, and it must’ve been automatic, because suddenly she adds: “Yes,” but as soon as his arm moves, she says: “No,” again instead.</p><p>Then it’s quiet again. Mick shifts his weight, awkward in his crouch, thighs starting to seize, and he hears her sharp intake of breath, and then, just as quick, she’s speaking again.</p><p>“You’re going to turn around,” she says, and Mick blinks in surprise. “And don’t even think of trying anything funny, because you are <em>not </em>going to be faster than me. Trust me, I am raising four boys on my own right now, I have reflexes you can’t even imagine, and a happy trigger finger for strange men in my house, so. You are going to turn around slowly. You are going to take the knife out of your pocket, and then you’re going to slide it across the floor towards me.”</p><p>And huh, Mick thinks, shifting again. It’s not a bad plan on her end. Wants to see his hands, give herself better vision even if it’s conceding to giving him a better look at her too. Still, he does as he’s told, shifting slowly around until his gaze finds her, and it’s weird, after these weeks of monitoring her. To suddenly be so close to her. Her pale skin bright below the stream of moonlight waning in through the bathroom window, and her cheeks flushed with what should be fear, but he’s not entirely sure <em>is</em>, and her fuzzy rabbit slippers and her robe (the pocket weighed down with what he quickly realises is his gun), and her faded, shapeless pyjamas, and, yeah, okay. Weirdest of all is the way she’s pointing the shotgun he’d planted in this very room straight at him.</p><p>Something in it makes his lips twitch, and maybe he’s surprised again too at the way that it doesn’t make her eyes dart for the door, for a way out. That she doesn’t plead with him or cry or look anything close to desperate.</p><p>No, she looks like she did in the church, stealing off that donation plate.</p><p>Like she knows exactly what she can get away with.</p><p>Mick slips his hand into his pocket, pulls out the knife, and slides it across the floor towards her. She doesn’t bend to pick it up like he expects either, instead reaching out a fluffy slippered foot and using it to drag the knife back across the floor, before kicking it hard behind her, out of reach.</p><p>Then, they just stare at each other again.</p><p>“Do you think I’m stupid?” she asks, and Mick blinks, head reeling back, and The Mark’s glower intensifies. “I know when I’m being followed. I worked with the FBI. Or not - - not <em>with </em>the FBI, but I was kind of in like, witness protec - - no, not really. Um. Look, the point is, I <em>know, </em>okay? I know when some guy’s in a car outside my house, I know when he follows me to church and the drug store and the grocery store, which I’m sure was just - - y’know - - <em>super </em>riveting entertainment for you, and just - - do you work for them?”</p><p>Somewhere outside, he hears her bug zapper fizz with the contact of a cicadas’ cellophane wings, and he hears the soft snores of one of her kids and the low hum of the neighbour talking to a friend on their back steps, but still. It’s hard to see anything that isn’t her, beautiful and furious, steady as a wire, caught between two grips, and Mick thinks again about lunging, overpowering, saving himself and finishing this job, but then - -</p><p>Shit.</p><p>Maybe he’s just sort of curious.</p><p>“Who?” he asks quietly, because he may as well find out how much she knows amidst all of this, and sort of by proxy, how much Rio’s girl knows too, because shit, he likes to think Rio knows better than to run his mouth about work with whoever’s warming his bed for the week, but he knows that particular woman has him twisted up some sort of way, and if Rio’s told her anything about the men he - - <em>they</em> - - answer to - -</p><p>“Beth. Boland.”</p><p>The words are bitten, etched in fury, and Mick can’t help it. He just stares for a moment, before finally barking loud on a laugh, because <em>fuck </em>if the idea of working for Beth Boland isn’t enough to give him hives, and he can feel The Mark’s eyes on him, can tell she’s about to say something, when a voice sounds from the hall.</p><p>“Mom?”</p><p>And just like that, they both freeze.</p><p>“I’ll be right there, sweetie. Mommy’s just gotten held up with - - a friend.”</p><p>It was the wrong thing to say and they both know it, because suddenly there’s the rush of footsteps down the hall and The Mark visibly panics before suddenly yanking Mick up to his feet and out into the hall, shoving the shotgun into the bathtub as she goes, and it just happens so <em>fast. </em>That’s all. That’s why Mick doesn’t do anything to stop himself being face to face with a pale-cheeked little boy in the hallway.  </p><p>And shit if the kid doesn’t have a hundred-yard stare<em>. </em></p><p>“Who are you?”</p><p>“This is a friend of mommy’s, Mr. - - Badman,” The Mark says quickly, suddenly, her grip tight in Mick’s shirt still, balled like a fist. The kid tilts his head to the side, and Mick aims for the sort of smile he’d give Marcus, but he doesn’t think it really works. “He heard you were all not feeling well and wanted to come and help me look after you, but I don’t need his help, so he’s going to go now.”</p><p>The explanation’s pretty fucking dire, and the kid seems to know it, because his gaze drifts between his mom and Mick like he’s thinking too hard, too seriously, and this seriously was the last thing Mick wanted. He shifts his weight, ignores The Mark’s iron grip in the front of his shirt still and looks straight back at the kid.</p><p>“Who are you?”</p><p>It’s fuckin’ parroting, but whatever, Mick figures, tonight’s been weird enough and nobody’s ever kept Mick around for the conversation, and he ignores the strange, dark look The Mark sends his way, keeps himself fixed on the way the kid squares his scrawny shoulders instead and says:  </p><p>“Billy.”</p><p>And oh.</p><p>Mick knew that.</p><p>Has it stored somewhere in the notes on his phone, but it’s different somehow.</p><p>To hear it said.</p><p>He nods – once, twice, three times – and okay, he should offer his name now, or he should leave, or - - or - - or - -</p><p>“I like your tattoos.”</p><p>“Billy - -” The Mark tightens her grip, and Mick grimaces when her fingers catch and pull a few chest hairs, but then Billy adds:</p><p>“They’re pretty cool.”</p><p>“Thanks,” Mick replies after a second, and Billy tilts his head to the other side.</p><p>“Billy, my friend needs to - - ”</p><p>“Do you like Uno?”</p><p>Which - -</p><p>Huh.</p><p>Mick shrugs.</p><p>“I’ve never played it.”</p><p>“Do you like waffles?”</p><p>Mick feels a bemused look cross his face at the question and finds himself looking back at The Mark, who starts mouthing a bunch of words at him that he doesn’t know how the fuck to read or respond to, and whatever, Mick’s never been much of a liar, so he says:</p><p>“I love waffles,” because he’s not really sure what else there is to say at this point, and the kid nods slowly, looking between him and his mom before saying:</p><p>“Mom, can me and Mr. Badman have chocolate chip waffles? I can teach him how to play Uno.”</p><p>“Oh, honey, Mr. Badman really has to - - ”</p><p>“Isn’t he here to help us feel better? I’d feel better if we had waffles. Just <em>one </em>even and then I’ll go straight back to sleep.”</p><p>The look on The Mark’s face is something he’s never seen before – some mix of terrified and exasperated and pissed off, and he can’t explain the way it makes something in him twist, and really, he should be getting out of here, but then The Mark is saying <em>sure </em>for some reason, and dragging him down the hall, and Mick blinks, because the hand not in his shirt is in the pocket of her robe, gripping Mick’s gun, and shit, he’s got to give her credit for that.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>So it goes like this:</p><p>The Mark makes chocolate chip waffles with one eye on Mick while Billy grabs a frayed cardboard box full of brightly coloured cards and tries to explain how Uno works, and look.</p><p>Mick’s never been particularly good at the non-life-or-death games at the best of times – never really spent time playing anything other than pool – but he’s particularly bad at Uno, a fact not helped by the fact that Billy seems to keep forgetting the rules or inventing new ones on the spot, changing up the meaning of reverse and draw cards, how skip cards sometimes mean Mick skips a turn and sometimes means Billy gets to skip <em>his </em>next turn, but whatever. The kid glows with delight or fever or both and by the time a plate of waffles is slipped his way, he giggles bright enough that The Mark has to shush him to stop him waking up his brothers.</p><p>It’s almost a surprise, when a plate with a few sad, slightly burnt looking waffles are slid Mick’s way, and he looks up at The Mark who stares steel-jawed back at him, her hand deep in the pocket of her robe in threat, and shit, he can almost imagine it. Her fingers curled around the hilt of his gun.</p><p>So he eats, and they’re actually pretty good – something about the slightly-singed pastry making the chocolate even richer – and he grins a little when Billy plays the next round with a waffle hanging out of his mouth and his fingers smearing chocolate all over the cards, and then it’s done, and The Mark sends the kid to bed, and then it’s just the two of them again.</p><p>The smell of powdered sugar hangs in the air, sits still sweet on his tongue, and he looks over at the too-firm look on her too-soft face, her blue eyes clearer than they have any right to be, and he thinks - -</p><p>Can he do it now?</p><p>Could he drag her back into that bathroom and end this all now?</p><p>The kid saw him though, he thinks.</p><p>No.</p><p>He’ll come back.</p><p>“The door’s that way.”</p><p>Right.</p><p>With a nod, Mick pushes up and out of the chair, wiping his hands on the belly of his shirt as he turns on his heel, striding across the clutter of her kitchen, down through the living room, towards the entrance. He can hear her slow, steady pace behind him, the scuff of her fuzzy rabbit slippers, and when he pulls open the door to step outside, he stops when he hears her voice.</p><p>“His brothers always beat him. That’s why he wanted you to play it with him. Not telling you all the rules – he was doing that on purpose. So that he could win for a change.”</p><p>He considers this for a moment, thinks it over, before slowly, gently, turning his head back to look at her. The movement seems to startle her a little, like she hadn’t quite realised she was speaking to him and not herself, and the thought settles somewhere funny in him.</p><p>He does that too sometimes.</p><p>His sister says it was because he was so used to being alone.</p><p>Mick just thinks sometimes it’s more like - -</p><p>Like you enjoy your own company maybe.</p><p>Or maybe not.</p><p>What does he know?</p><p>“Not a bad strategy,” he concedes, because that at least he does, and The Mark snorts, lips twitching, and Mick knows that’s not for him. That it’s for Billy, laughing, giddy in his seat, legs swinging below him, getting better.</p><p>(<em>You’ll get better, you’ll get better, you’ll get better.</em>)</p><p>But still - -</p><p>It’s sort of - -</p><p>Mick clears his throat, hears the rev of a motorbike a block up. Thinks of the long drive home. Thinks of Rio’s order, then - -</p><p>“You gonna give me my gun back?”</p><p>At the question, The Mark’s gaze snaps back up to him, her eyebrows climbing up her forehead as she says:</p><p>“What do you think?”</p><p>And okay, that’s fair. Mick snorts, drums his fingers a little at his belly, useless for a moment, and he opens his mouth to say something else when suddenly the baby cries, and The Mark turns on the spot and then, just like that, the door is closed in his face.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>So he fucked up.</p><p>That’s what he thinks, unhooking the bolt on the basement window as he climbs in, a new gun wedged into the back of his pants. He was just caught off guard, that’s all, and he needs to act quicker, sharper, just like he would with anyone else, because at the end of the day, she’s just a mark, and this is just a job, and it’s not like any of this - -</p><p>A gun cocks.</p><p>Mick glances sideways as the light in the hall flicks on, and there’s The Mark again, staring at him from the stairs, shotgun pressed into her shoulder.</p><p>He stares at her for a minute, opens his mouth to speak, but she doesn’t give him a chance.</p><p>“You have two choices. You climb back out that window and you leave me and my children alone, or you can come upstairs and have a waffle and play that stupid game, and I am only offering you that because I accidentally made too many, and they’re past their best by date, so I don’t want to waste them, and the boys might actually be driving me insane.”</p><p>He stares at her. Swallows.</p><p>“I could eat.”</p><p>From her spot on the stairs, The Mark squints a little at him, seems to take him in, and he figures the night’s already shot if the kids are awake, if she’s seen him, so he may as well eat something or whatever, and when she nods, starts back up the stairs, he follows her.</p><p>Billy yells, delighted when he sees him, and makes this huge show of introducing him to his brothers, and it’s sort of weird, but that doesn’t matter, anyway. The three boys completely fleece him at Uno.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>The third time, she’s added bananas to the waffles, drenched in brown sugar, cinnamon, and rum.</p><p>“It makes the kids sleep better,” she whispers at him defensively, one of the older boys passed out in her lap, and Mick just holds up his hand and takes another mouthful. Not like he can judge, he’s supposed to be here to kill her, and besides.</p><p>They’re really good.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>“What are you thinkin’?” Carlos bites, and shit - -</p><p>The music’s too fucking loud.</p><p>That’s what Mick’s thinking.</p><p>The bar’s been open again for two weeks now, and it must’ve been missed. Must’ve been because the place has been packed-the-fuck <em>out </em>every single night since, and Mick hates that he misses it. Those months where they’d closed the place under the guise of renovations, rebuilt the space as a place that was just <em>theirs</em>, but nah, that’s gotta be the warehouse now, and business is business. Vaguely he can see Dags by the bar, grabbing another round of drinks, can see Bullet meeting in the back corner with a TA and a campus nurse from University of Michigan, negotiating some deal for pills, and then - - by the pool table.</p><p>Rio.</p><p>Hand on a woman’s back – showin’ her how to aim a pool cue.</p><p>He’s almost too relaxed – languid and easy, not a care in the world, and maybe it’s true in the minute of it, might even stay true when he gets her to take him back to her place – but Mick knows he’ll be worse tomorrow.</p><p>Always is these days.</p><p>Like he’s scratched the wrong itch.  </p><p>“He’s gettin’ pissed,” Carlos adds, and Mick tilts his head back. “This job shoulda been done by now, and everyone knows it, man, boss especially.”</p><p>And yeah. Figures. Mick’s almost surprised Rio hasn’t hounded him more about it, but he figures the guy’s been distracted, and whatever. Mick’s been glad for it. He’s man enough to admit that. He snuffles, inhaling the deep scent of the bar – sweat and expensive cologne and sugar sweet liqueurs and fuck, why’d he even come out tonight. He could be - -</p><p>The thought comes so suddenly that Mick blinks, his hand twitching at the tabletop, and after a minute, he shakes his head.</p><p>“Rio got a problem, he can talk to me about it.”</p><p>With that, he shoves up from his seat, ignoring Carlos’ <em>come on, man, </em>behind him and the way he can feel Rio’s eyes find him from across the bar, and so what, if the job’s taking a little longer? It doesn’t mean anything. There just hasn’t been a good moment, the right time, and Rio’s gotta get that, because it ain’t like he hasn’t been pussyfooting around ending this shit with <em>Her, </em>and it doesn’t matter.</p><p>It doesn’t matter that Mick goes home to his empty house, and it doesn’t matter that he stays up until late because every time he closes his eyes he sees Rio, gaunt and too pale, moving stiff with the aftershocks of those three fucking bullets, or he sees <em>Her, </em>hands shaking but her chin high in the passenger seat of the car as he took her to see Rio that night at the bar, and it doesn’t matter if the only thing that gets him to sleep is finally reading the fucking rules to that stupid fucking card game anyway.</p><p>It doesn’t work anyway. He still dreams of Alaska and he still wakes up alone.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>The next time, he helps her wash up after.</p><p>Feels bad enough really, about not having done it the other times, because it’s not like he doesn’t know how much time she spends cleaning up after four little boys. Not like he doesn’t know how much of her days are spent mopping, scrubbing, fixing, bleaching, and y’know, she made fudge this time, and Benji had oozed it over the table as he’d sleepily raised his spoon to his mouth.</p><p>So it’s manners, that’s all, that gets him soaking the sponge in hot, soapy water and getting a head start on the plates while she marches Billy and Benji to bed.</p><p>He’s lost in his thoughts when he hears the dish get pulled off the rack beside him, turns in time to see her drying it with a holey tea towel, awkwardly, with the knife still in her grip. Because that’s the thing about her – even after all these nights. She’s never left herself unarmed around him, and fuck if he doesn’t still respect it.</p><p>Outside, he can hear the neighbour watching TV. Can hear a dog bark, a car pull up in someone else’s driveway, hear someone yell, but it’s easy to ignore it all. To just watch instead as The Mark makes careful work drying the plates he’s washed, stacking them on the bench by the microwave, and then she clears her throat, a flush finding her cheeks.</p><p>“I’m Mary Pat, by the way. You probably knew that already.”</p><p>It’s offered simply, frankly, and her eyes dart up to the window above her sink, just enough to catch his reflection, before she looks back down at her task, and he could do it now.</p><p>
  <em>Should. </em>
</p><p>It wouldn’t take much to disarm her, or - -</p><p>He looks at her grip, firm. Thinks of the hunting trophies in the garage.</p><p>Maybe it would.</p><p>“Mick,” he replies, thoughtless, and she does look at him properly then.</p><p>“Short for Michael?”</p><p>It’s not, but he shrugs, because it’s not like it really matters, and Mary Pat seems unbothered, walking back to the table to grab Benji’s plate from the pile – Mick knows it’s his because he’s carefully picked off the three pieces of apple Mary Pat had tried to feed him, but otherwise scraped the plate clean – and eats one of the apple slices herself, before offering one of the others to Mick.</p><p>And what the hell, he thinks, grabbing one of the pieces, and it’s then that she asks it:</p><p>“Are you going to try and kill me again?”</p><p>Mick chews on his sticky, caramel apple, looking at the way the fan musses her hair and the way her eyes stare back at him, and shit, she’s kind of tough.</p><p>“Yes,” he says, and at the word, she grabs the last piece of apple before he can, eating it easily and stepping around him, back to the sink. </p><p>“Well, since you don’t work for Beth Boland and her - - You know. Her <em>operation</em>, I’m probably going to tell her, and you just might have to answer to all of that, so.”</p><p>Which - -</p><p>
  <em>What? </em>
</p><p>Mick laughs before he can help himself, the image of Mary Pat running off to tell Rio’s girl of all people is enough to tickle. Like - - what the fuck is she going to do? Call the police again? Nah, probably send it up the corporate ladder, because as much as she likes to think herself the boss, she sure likes having one to clean up after her when all this shit goes down.</p><p>“Oh, yeah?” he asks, and Mary Pat nods, dropping the plate into the sink and turning back to face him. She rests her back against it, and he knows the water there must be soaking through the back of her shirt.</p><p>“Yeah, you laugh, but she’s really - - ” Mary Pat seems to consider her words for a minute. “Something else.”</p><p>And shit, ain’t that the truth. He can’t quite hide his grin, his eyes flicking down to the knife still in Mary Pat’s grip, and Mary Pat clocks it, looking down at it, and he expects her to put it down, embarrassed, but instead she holds it up and uses it to gesture between them.</p><p>“Okay, well, just so that we’re clear,” she adds, and then, with the knife, gestures to the front room. “Also next time you come to kill me, I’d really prefer you use the door.”</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>And okay, so, maybe he should’ve taken her at her word, because he shows up at the warehouse a few days later to Rio stinking of Her perfume and a tiny bruise on his cheek like the bar of a ring. He rocks his jaw when he sees Mick, rolls his shoulders back, thrusts his tongue into his cheek, and Mick says:</p><p>“Saturday. It’ll be handled.”</p><p>And what reason has Rio ever had to doubt him?</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>The interior light of the van glints off her glasses.</p><p>These are what Mick’s dreams are like these days.</p><p>He sees the light and then, behind him, he hears Rio’s girl’s desperate bargaining and then Rio’s drawl – something manufactured to sound lazy, cool, instead of iron built like Mick knows it is – and when he glances over, Rio nods, and Mick raises his arm, finger tightening on the trigger and - -</p><p>A flash.</p><p>He’s at the cemetery, Rio’s girl’s friend sucking in hoarse breaths as she lifts the shovel with trembling hands, and Mick wonders if they’ve seen a dead body before.</p><p>He makes himself stay. Makes himself hear it. The sharp inhale. The sister - - <em>Annie </em>- - pukes at one point, but Rio’s girl never flinches, even as her eyes get puffy, her cheeks wet.</p><p>And then - -</p><p>Flash.</p><p>Then it’s Mary Pat.</p><p>“You’ll get better, you’ll get better, you’ll get better,” she says.</p><p>Flash.</p><p>Her eyes bright, staring at him in the reflection on the window above her sink. She’s so warm.</p><p>She’s so close.</p><p>“Are you going to try and kill me again?”</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>This time, he uses the door.</p><p>“<em>Mooooooom,</em>” Billy calls, even as he hops, one-legged over to Mick, hands already grabbing for Mick’s bag. “Your friend is here!”</p><p>And he hates that it’s enough to make him pause. To make him gently bat Billy’s hands away and open the bag just enough the kid can see inside to the Dandy Donuts box within. With a happy yell, Billy swap his hopping legs and swipes the bag from Mick’s grip before running off into the dining room, hollering gleefully, and Mick lifts his head in time to catch her.</p><p>Run ragged, always, her dark hair pulled back off her face in a messy bun, her flannel shirt askew, and he thinks - -</p><p>He doesn’t know what he thinks.</p><p>But - -</p><p>She looks happy almost.</p><p>To see him.</p><p>And she can’t. Shouldn’t. Because he’s going to kill her and she knows it, and because Mick isn’t the sort of guy anyone’s really happy to see, and she takes the donuts off him and gestures him in and okay, so he sits with her kids and Benji talks his ear off about <em>Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous </em>and Billy asks him about his tattoos all over again (and he even thinks the stick-and-poke ones are cool) and eats the waffles Mary Pat puts in front of him with whipped cream from a can and frozen raspberries and peanut butter which isn’t a combination he’d ever thought of before, but then, that’s not really who he is.</p><p>But still, he helps Andy clean up after he spills a full glass of milk down his shirt and Benji with the ice cream after Mary Pat has to go get the baby, and they play that stupid game and maybe reading the rules paid off because he wins his first round and he expects the kids to sulk but they all cheer and yell and say <em>finally </em>with bright, giggling tones<em>, </em>and something in him uncurls because the last time someone cheered for him it was in Pistol’s underground boxing ring, but his knuckles aren’t bloody and his head isn’t throbbing, and he’s just - - he feels - -</p><p>It doesn’t matter.</p><p>What matters is the gun in the back of his jeans.</p><p>What matters is that he has to kill her.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>And he gets his chance when the kids file off to bed and Mary Pat sinks back down into the kitchen chair, feeding a bottle of warm milk into the baby’s mouth, hiking him up into the nook of her arm.</p><p>The back light has blown which means the kitchen feels darker than normal, the lack of light filtering in through the window outside meaning their only source of it is the dim, dangling exposed lightbulb above their heads and a green nightlight by the stash of baby bottles on the kitchen counter. The shadows are forgiving. A veil over the bags beneath Mary Pat’s eyes and the scars on Mick’s hands, and it leaves everything between them dulled. Soft almost, he thinks, watching her watch him across the kitchen table.</p><p>“You’re pretty nice for a bad guy,” she tells him after a moment, and something in Mick tightens, even as he shrugs, because she’s wrong. Mick knows she is, even if he isn’t entirely sure on which part.</p><p>“I should know,” she adds. “I’ve known a lot of them. Bad guys, I mean.”</p><p>For a moment, the words seem to echo. To ricochet around the space like a familiar song stopped in the middle, and Mick tilts his head, watches her stare back at him, blink hard, and then she tilts her head, looking down at the baby in her arms.</p><p>It’s a picture – her with all her dark hair, pouring over her shoulders, her too blue eyes, clutching this angelic-faced baby to her chest. Virgin Mary of Suburbia.</p><p>“I think I’m a bad guy. Girl. Woman. Person. Maybe. I don’t know.”</p><p>And shit, Mick can’t help himself. He snorts at that, stares down at his hands in his lap.</p><p>“What? You cut in line at the grocery store?”</p><p>“All the time,” she says, a breathless little laugh in the back of her throat, and then: “Also I chopped up my husband.”</p><p>His head snaps back up at that.</p><p>She’s still holding the baby - - of course she is - - has him nestled in-between her breast and arm, his eyes shut and his little mouth open as she pulls the now empty bottle from him and drops it back to the table. His fingers are curled in her shirt.</p><p>“He was already dead, but I - - I - - I needed money, and I loved him, but I love them more, and so I - - I chopped him up and put him in the freezer.”</p><p>Her chin juts, wobbles, juts again, like she’s daring him to say something and begging that he won’t, and Mick mostly just thinks that she looks pale. Her skin is half-lit green by the Monster’s Inc nightlight glowing behind her, and yet still she looks pale. He licks the back of his teeth, blinks once, twice, turns over her words in his head, and he should say nothing. He should leave, but what he says instead is:</p><p>“I’ve killed a lot of people.”</p><p>As soon as the words have left his mouth, all he can hear are the sounds outside this room – the heavy, meditative bang of her old washer against the wall in the basement as it tosses around it’s spin cycle, the neighbour’s kids breaking beer bottles against the fence, a couple fighting, three houses up. </p><p>It’s hot, but he feels the cold.</p><p>The light is yellow, except for where it’s green.</p><p>He’s in her kitchen.</p><p>He’s in Alaska.</p><p>Fuck.</p><p>He’s always in Alaska these days.</p><p>“Oh,” Mary Pat replies, her voice small, staring down at the baby in her arms even though her gaze is somehow very far away. “Right.”</p><p>And then she’s just quiet.</p><p>Mick’s hands settle on his thighs, rubbing aimlessly down each one. He looks away from her, and then back to her, then away, and this time when he looks up, she’s staring back at him, her forehead furrowed, her lips pulled into a thin line, but she doesn’t get up.</p><p>Doesn’t throw him out.</p><p>She doesn’t every look scared.</p><p>“That change things?” he asks, because he can’t help it, and fuck, he doesn’t even know what he means.</p><p>
  <em>Between us?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>For us? </em>
</p><p>Jesus, what <em>us</em>? He just - - he has no idea, but Mary Pat seems to get it, because she just wets her lips.</p><p>“I don’t know,” she says, and then she blinks rapidly, pulls the baby in a little closer. “No, I - - I don’t know if anything does anymore. I’ve kinda been through a lot, the last two years, and it’s like - - it happens, but then everything just - - is exactly as it was. I don’t know what that makes me.”</p><p><em>A survivor</em>, he thinks.</p><p>Just like him.</p><p>The night light flickers, and he sees the warp of the green sky again, and then the washing machine finishes its cycle. Somewhere, one of the other boy’s snorts loud in his sleep, and it must be Benji on the top bunk, because he hears Andy in below try to <em>Mortal Kombat </em>kick the mattress above him, but Mary Pat doesn’t get up, so Mick doesn’t either.</p><p>“You want me to put the baby to bed?” he offers, because maybe then they can - - something. Talk maybe? Does he want to talk?</p><p>Fuck, he has no idea.</p><p>But Mary Pat just blinks up at him.</p><p>“You just told me you were a murderer.”</p><p>Which - - sure, Mick thinks, looking down at her, but - -</p><p>“You just told me you keep your husband in the freezer.”</p><p>“I mean, he’s not in there any<em>more</em>.”</p><p>She offers it so flippantly, so offhand, that Mick stares and Mary Pat swallows a laugh, a flush finding the high point of her cheeks, and before Mick can ask for any sort of elaboration, she’s bundling up the baby and piling him into his arms, and - - okay, the thing is, maybe Mick can count the number of people who’ve trusted him to hold their kid on one hand.</p><p>Maybe it’s only one of his two sisters, none of his brothers.</p><p>Maybe it’s Rio, passing him Marcus, over and over, without a second thought.</p><p>Maybe - -</p><p>Maybe that’s it.</p><p>But here he is, holding the child of a woman who suddenly, instantly, knows more of him than most, and the baby doesn’t even stir, and he can tell Mary Pat is nervous, he can see it in her eye, and he softens himself as much as he can for her, for the baby. Tries to shrink himself, shed himself, but he’s no good at it. Knows it just makes him awkward, like he doesn’t fit in his body anymore, but still. He walks quietly down the hall to the crib in her room, and the baby’s little hand only flails to hold Mick’s arm as he lowers him, and he’s so small, Mick thinks.</p><p>So fragile.</p><p>Mick’s never been the sort of guy trusted with fragile things.</p><p>He swallows thickly, leans up, and when he turns around, she’s in the doorway, watching him. Her arms are folded across her chest, and there’s a look on her face he can’t read, and fuck, she’s even paler without the green glow of the monster night light, and her flannel shirt is too dark, and she’s just <em>staring </em>at him, and she’s beautiful in a way that feels like someone dipped a brush into his head and drew her just for him, and - -</p><p>And he should leave.</p><p>That much is pretty clear at this point, and Mick sucks in his cheeks, tries to swallow the new lump in his throat, and he nods, starts to walk past her, only then her hand is on his arm and he stops.</p><p>She just - -</p><p>Looks at him.</p><p>No.</p><p><em>Sees</em> him.</p><p>“Well, this is a mistake,” she says.</p><p>And then she kisses him.</p>
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